I'm going to be using my computer to run an real-time video display application at an event. This application is processor intensive, and runs well, except for occasional stutters. I'm thinking the stutters might be from other applications/processes using computer resources (proc/drive/etc.) For this event, this application deserves priority and everything else can wait.
Does anyone have some general tips for giving a single application priority and keeping the computer from doing any other housekeeping (such as spotlight indexing)?